Archives/Research

Beginning in 1983 the Prelinger Archives began collecting ephemeral American films. The collection now claims to be in possession of over ten percent of these films made between 1927 and 1987. Using the Internet Archive, almost two thousand of these films are searchable and viewable on the internet.

The archive offers a simple search feature for searching within the Prelinger collection. The search feature is effective at retrieving desired information but often includes some curious results. For example, a search for “chicken” will return, among the various films about poultry, a film on pedophilia titled “Boys Beware” in the top ten returns. Upon closer review it becomes evident that the films is pulled up in the search because of the use of the work “chicken” in a review of the film offered by a visitor to the site.

In addition to the search feature, the collection is broken down in to categories by keywords. Most films fall into more than one of the hundreds of categories ranging from the “1950s” to “Youth Culture”. However, when trying to use the keyword headings to find something of a particular subject matter, the results are hit or miss.

The larger Internet Archive, where the Prelinger collection is housed, has an advanced search function that allows for very detailed searching. There are a myriad of search options, most of which are not pertinent to searching within Prelinger’s collection. In addition to being able to search by title and author, the user can search by criteria like bit rate, copy right expiration date, or even the user names of visitors who have reviewed films.

One project that would expand the usability and research value of this collection would be to make a text based database of transcriptions made from the films. The basic search function has shown to be iffy and the keyword listings are flimsy. If a user wanted to research a specific topic, like the language used in 1950s discourse about poultry, a transcript search could prove valuable.

Currently, the only indicator of the content of the film is a one sentence synopsis available on the page for each film and perhaps user reviews of the film where available. If the researcher were able to search a transcript of the film, they could determine whether or not the content is pertinent to their needs. Making this determination beforehand avoids the time consuming and bandwidth devouring download. Also, you can determine whether watching twenty minutes of film are a worthy investment.

In addition to the inherent benefit of wider dispersal over the internet, the primary advantage of this project in an online form versus a printed form is its searchability. By eliminating the need for indexes and additional reading, the search process makes the pertinent material available to the researcher much quicker.

The major drawback of this proposed project would be the time investment required to transcribe the films. I’m not aware of any current technology that is able to transcribe the films.

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